Bottle. THanks to DSG. Pours a clear orange color with a small white head. Has a grassy hoppy bitter aroma with some hints of caramel. Malty hoppy bitter grassy flavor with hints of grapefruit. Has a long hoppy bitter grapefruit finish with a long bitter aftertaste.

Bottle at Craig’s bit tasting, Edinburgh, 21-03-09 thanks to Craig for hosting and for getting hold of some great beers. Pours copper coloured with a white head. Really fresh hoppy nose, makes me think a little of Sierra Nevada or Stone can’t recall which, but very fresh green hops with some nice maltiness as well. The taste is wonderfully zingy hops, hops, hops but its bathed in a wonderfully indulgent sweetness, yes its a touch syrupy but yum its lovely and is a perfect counterbalance to those hops. A really likeable beer that I can only criticise a little for the alcohol just showing a little too much throughout. A8 A5 F8 P4 OV16 4.1

Thanks to aspidites for this - although someone else poured it. Hazy brown with a lacing tan head. Aroma is caramel and dense pinewood hoppy with a minor note of grapefruit. Flavour is dense hoppy and thick malty - sweet, solid brew. Very flavourful indeed. Grapefruity and solid bitter into the finish. Fantastic flavour.

Courtesy Boboski, thanks Jason, I finally get a chance to try this one. Pours hazy copper with lasting off white to tan head. The aroma is just huge!!! With grapefruit hop notes all over the place. I can see some on the ceiling. It has grapefruit juice, grapefruit rind, under ripe grapefruit wedges, - wow! The taste is much the same starting with bold grapefruit juice mixed with grapefruit rind and orange rind and then green under ripe grapefruit wedges. Again, wow! There is a mild malty sweetness that just barely murmurs to the surface from time to time. The whole experience progresses with ever increasing grapefruit hop bitterness that just doesn’t give up until well after the taste is over.

Bottle from KrausenJockey drunk on 4/16/07
Holy mother of God! This aroma certainly caught me by surprise. I was expecting a lot, but this just blew my expectations out of the water. I sat there and sniffed it for a good 10 minutes, not wanting to take a sip for fear it wouldnt live up. Just a magnificent bouquet of fruits including mango, papaya, red grapefruit, passion fruit, melon, orange, lime, cherry, strawberry and whatever else you can discern in this. It dries out a fair amount, towards the end, with zesty orange and nectarine-like notes that further add uinqueness. Bold, huge, juicy, and lasting, it gets in your face and sticks around. Very lacking in bitterness, it’s almost all dry hop and finishing hop aromatics. Malt stays out of the way, as it should, only adding light pale malt sugars to give the hops a bit more sweetness/juiciness and a solid backbone to rest upon. I didn’t find any overt acidity, alcohol, cattiness, or b-vitamin yeastiness. Wow. The best bottled DIPA aroma I have found. Even surpasses the original batches of Goose Island DIPA in its complexity, I think. Goose Island IIPA was more watermelon/red grapefruit focused and didnt have the tropical fruits, floral and more dry, assertive citrus complexity of this. I don’t think Goose Island had the sheer intensity of this either. Let’s add one more "Wow" for good measure before moving on.
With a nose like this, you know the flavor can’t be bad, and that’s definitely true here. Though I thought the body was just a bit too dextrinous, I’d rather it be a bit on the fuller side to help soak up the acids, than on the thinner side and leave them exposed to attack the palate. Lots of citrus, dry orange peel, white grapefruit and a definite pineapple flavor on the finish build up, with a fair share of the tropical fruits and cherries mixing in. Creamy, engaging carbonation is very impressive if this isnt bottle conditioned. Bitterness definitely notable, and builds up a touch, while there is some light warming from the alcohol on the finish. But I never got any of the fusel, or harsh, blatant alcohol flavors mentioned by others, and I certainly let the stuff warm and breath.
It’s a tall order brewing these beers and it’s an extreme juggling act to balance the hop bitterness and high gravity of the beer without it being either too bitter/acidic or too syrupy/sweet. This one comes about as close as any I’ve seen, especially taking in to consideration that this is a bottled brew, and DIPAs characteristically take best to a fresh draught line.
Fantastic, maybe in subsequent batches they can thin/dry the body out just a touch more. If you don’t love the nose on this, you should pretty much give up on the style.